Progress...

Well as predicted I've been a bit lazy with the blogging, not to mention a bit lazy with actually going to take photos at the site! Things have moved on a fair bit since my last post, the ground has been cleared and no less than 200 tonnes of stone has been ferried in to create a more solid footing for the pile driver, which arrived on Thursday of last week to pound 26 - yes 26 - reinforced concrete posts 8 metres down into the bog where they finally found hard ground that will support the weight of our house. These pics show what it was like before the piling - I'll post some more soon but if you imagine this with a load of mini tower blocks sticking up out of the ground you'll get the picture. The piles have been cut to height now ready for the 'ringbeam', which I think is just more concrete connecting them all together, to be fitted before the pre-cast floor slab is delivered. And once that's done...walls! It's scary how fast it's moving and how much of the mortgage has been swallowed up already, but very exciting all the same.

Looking down our driveway...



This will be our back garden!

It begins...

Last week, a very exciting and kind of scary thing happened. After a very long, often frustrating process, we were finally, FINALLY given the green light to begin work on building our own house! There have been so many forms to fill in, hoops to jump through, meetings and phone calls to be had that I'd begun to think it wasn't meant to be. And that was hard because we are lucky to have a site in a place that is special to me; somewhere that evokes memories of my childhood, where I am close to my family and also where I feel close to my late father. Add to that the fact that it gives us a chance to enjoy more space, more privacy and will afford our son the opportunity to climb trees and explore and be a proper kid, not like the pale-faced brats in our development who spend half their time in front of the TV and the other half out doing things they shouldn't, and you could say this is the opportunity of a lifetime.
And for me, an adventure wouldn't be an adventure if I didn't write about it so here I am, blogging. And maybe I'll lose interest after a few weeks or maybe the build will prove to be so drawn-out that I lose the will to live, never mind blog about it, but for now I am planning to share the experience with anybody who wants to read about it. It's still early days, we've just begun clearing the site and so to start with here are some pics of the beautiful place we will soon be able to call home :) It's part of an old railway line and when the house is finished we plan to name it 'Railway Cottage' - although I'm guessing you figured that out already!

And here's that last view taken after the diggers moved in...